The Cartographers’ Guild is a forum created by and for map makers and aficionados, a place where every aspect of cartography can be admired, examined, learned, and discussed. Our membership consists of professional designers and artists, hobbyists, and amateurs—all are welcome to join and participate in the quest for cartographic skill and knowledge.

Although we specialize in maps of fictional realms, as commonly used in both novels and games (both tabletop and role-playing), many Guild members are also proficient in historical and contemporary maps. Likewise, we specialize in computer-assisted cartography (such as with GIMP, Adobe apps, Campaign Cartographer, Dundjinni, etc.), although many members here also have interest in maps drafted by hand.

If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ. You will have to register before you can post or view full size images in the forums.

Ferric Tide Font

The first in my Ferric series, which I'll be basing off of several 1700-1720 maps I've collected images of.

Still need to do the kerning, so I'm not uploading the font just yet, but I've finished the glyphs (I think). This font is meant for labeling oceans and things -- I can't imagine anyone wanting numerals in it (especially since there will be numerals in the other Ferric fonts), so I didn't include numerals. But that makes me feel like a bad font designer. What do you guys think? Does it need numbers?

That honestly wouldn't be that hard at all. It's just a matter of re-vectorizing them (the font is in quadratic beziers, and every other image-editing program I've seen/found is in cubic beziers -- they don't translate well so you have to redraw them). They'd have to be pure black/white though.

It'd be really fun and rewarding, too. I'd totally volunteer to make the font pack after the challenge. It really could all be done in one font, too. There's a LOT of space for symbols. It'd just be a wingdings font.

I can see the usefulness of numbers and punctuation because I use them for things other than maps. But that's up to you so just keep having fun.

If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)

For some reason I thought Gidde was a woman....did I get you mixed up with someone else?

“When it’s over and you look in the mirror, did you do the best that you were capable of? If so, the score does not matter. But if you find that you did your best you were capable of, you will find it to your liking.” -John Wooden

Gidde! How are you doing this at such speed? This is amazingly fast and great work! Numbers probably are a necessity as people might want to use them for Lats and Longs, and the scale bar. I'm just about to start the uppercase with Blair Hand Italics, work has been been pretty busy this week so I've not had a chance to make a decent run at it.

Nope Jax you were right, I just get called "him" so often on the internet and xbox that I don't bother to correct it every time

Ravs, this particular font went really fast because (a) I was able to find examples of every single letter on my reference maps, (b) it's small caps so all I really had to do with the lowercase glyphs was fix the line widths, and (c) it's an extremely geometric font, so once i learned its "rules" drawing all the glyphs was pretty darn easy. The next in the family will use non-extended versions of these caps and actual lowercase glyphs, so I think it will take some more time.